All Saints’ Day – Enduring Disappointment

Sermons – St. Brendan's Anglican Church

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All Saints’ Day 2024
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Sirach 44:1-14, Revelation 7:9-17, Matthew 5:1-12

Today we observe the Feast of All Saints. It began in the fourth century as a catch all feast to remember all the martyrs of the Diocletian persecution.

By the ninth century in the British Isles, it had moved to November 1 and later Pope Gregory IV expanded this observance to the whole Western church. It is followed on November 2 with the Feast of All Souls, where we remember all the faithful departed, not just those who have left a name, and the day before All Saints or All Holies Eve is where we get Halloween when we remember and ward off the less appealing spirits. But what is a saint?

The word comes from the Latin “sanus” meaning only the Greek equivalent Haggios appears 229 times in the Greek New Testament, so a saint is a holy one or a set apart one, an exemplary model, an inspired teacher, a worker of miracles. They are often an ascetic who denies the world and more often than not, they are considered as possessed of a special relationship with God. The term saint is first of all used for named saints: Saint Mary, Saint John, Saint Brendan, the famous men mentioned in our reading from Sirach today. Saint can also be used to refer to all the faithful departed, the people who left no name, and yet their deeds live on both throughout Christian history and particularly in our lives, more broadly the term saint is used for all Christian people.

That certainly how Paul uses it. Now there’s a problem inherent in this definition and it has to do with the accretion over time of legends and stories and how that shaped how we view things. I think it part of God’s providence that October 31st is also Reformation Day.

That we say something about the reform of the church, right, before we go in into remembering all these holy people. Because it was a problem then and a problem now. The problem now takes on a certain psychological reality for us that has a huge theological impact, and that problem is this.

When we use stained glass language to describe the saints, when we talk about them in such exalted terms, well, it separates us from them. They become Christian superheroes rather than our older brothers and sisters. And so that number three of the definition Paul’s usage that all Christian people of our saints tends to get forgotten underneath all the trappings of tradition.

I want to take a hard left turn today and suggest my own definition of what a saint is. The saints of God were primarily saints of God in their disappointment, which means that All Saints Day would be a feast for remembering all those who have endured their disappointment in a profoundly Christian fashion.

I’m serious. Let me explain. Have you noticed that life is difficult?

It doesn’t take too many years of experience to learn this. My young son Isaiah, 18 months old, is already starting to say no, not just in the defiance sense, but in the existential sense. He wants something he can’t have and I don’t give it to him and he says no.

Life is difficult. There’s that lost job. The poor health. The failed relationship. The enemies we have, the general sense of cultural malaise and decline. There’s this overwhelming sense that things shouldn’t be like this. Fill in your blank for the this.

That it’s just too hard It’s a sense that’s almost universal. And it’s universal not just in 2024, but through all human life. And thus, for the saints of the church, too. Because no human life is free from disappointment.

Let’s consider the famous ones in a way you may have never thought of Saint Mary scorned as an unwed mother with a sword through her heart at Jesus’ passion. Saint Benedict and Martin Luther 1100 years apart, they both went to Rome, the political, cultural, and religious capital of their society only to find it morally and spiritually bankrupt, religious disillusionment. Julian of Norwich and Saint John Paul II, both endured severe, excruciating, long term illnesses, and Saint Teresa of Calcutta well, when her journals came out, we learned that even as she was serving the poor so courageously all those years, she suffered from depression and a sense of spiritual darkness.

Then there are those less well known. Hebrews 11 mentions them. I’m going to start reading at verse 33 It’s kind of interesting when you think of saints.

Through faith they conquered kingdoms, administered justice, gained what was promised, shut the mouth of lions, quenched raging fire escaped the edge of the sword gained strength in weakness, mighty in battle, they put foreign armies to flight, and women received back their dead raised to life. Les, I thought you were talking about disappointment. He doesn’t stop there.

Others were tortured, not accepting release. Others experienced mocking and flogging, even chains and imprisonment they were stoned, sawed apart, murdered with the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goat skins.

They were destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, they wandered in deserts and mountains and caves, and lived in the openings of the earth. Saints. There’s the disreputable priest and theologian who suffered scorn; the mother whose kids are lost in drugs. My first spiritual director, who died with Lou Gehrig’s disease, unable to speak.

My pastor friend who has been widowed, not once, but twice, faithful Christians all choked by disappointment. You can fill in your own, too. Because the fact of the matter is disappointment is ubiquitous, even for the saints This may be common human experience. It may be where we begin, but what makes a saint a saint is that it is not where they end. Faith and hope and love and date enable a saint to persevere to the end to persevere in their disappointment.

Faith echoing the words of Hebrew 11 that in Christ we can be sure of what we do not see hope that God is building his future right now in the present age, and that as his saints we are the living stones, the building material of that kingdom love, saints are so full of Christ’s love for them and for all creation that in the midst of disappointment there is none-the-less strength to endure and share that love with others. So Saint Mary can say, let it be to me, according to your word. She can endure the death of her son, stand at the cross and find herself in the upper room at Pentecost, the birth of the church. Benedict and Luther faced with a corrupt Rome, they don’t run away, they don’t stop attending their congregations or give up in the face of religious corruption.

They dedicate their lives to the work of reform. Mother Julian and Saint John Paul II produced profound theological and spiritual insights, not despite their suffering, but in their case precisely because of it. Mother Teresa may have felt abandoned to her dying day, but the poor and the dying of India did not feel abandoned. They were loved and felt it from her.

That broken priest and theologian who suffered scorn, left behind works that lift those to this day that the church has forgotten the attics, the mentally ill. The hopeless that mom well, she’s gone too, but not before she prayed her kids back into the faith. The spiritual director with ALS, he died, a really tragic death, but he made me who I am today. That pastor friend of mine well, he’s still alive and having lost two wives, he is an invaluable resource to day to widows and particularly to widowers.

Again, you can fill in your own. Disappointment is common, even for saints, but what makes a saint a saint is enough faith and hope and love to endure in a profoundly Christian fashion. It is enough to trust Christ with both their life and their death. Which is why I now want to turn to the one kind of saint in the definition we haven’t talked about you and me. It is the clear teaching of the church that we too are saints set apart holy, living stones of the kingdom of God, and yet there is still that lost job, the poor health, the failed relationship.

There are enemies in the ever-present cultural decline. Thoreau said, “We are like the mass of men who live lives of quiet desperation.” How do we endure our disappointment in that same profoundly Christian fashion? If the saints teach us anything I want to leave you with three little nuggets today, first of all begin with the end in mind.

Begin with the end in mind. Christ is the Lord of time, which means that where we end up cannot compare with the sufferings of the present time. The most useful thing I have to share with my patients is not any wisdom I have.

It’s the words we heard today from Revelation 7. I read it to them in their rooms. I read it over their graves.

Revelation 7 today paints a picture of our end. We come out of the great tribulation, sparkling white. No more hunger, thirst, or tears, no more pain, no more disappointment.

Our song today said it well, and notice there is no conditionality in the words no conditionality it is imperative and indicative. We will feast in the House of Zion. We will sing with our hearts restored.

He has done great things. We will say together we will feast and weep no more. If you can’t begin with that end in mind, please keep coming.

Other otherwise the disappointment it’s going to choke you. Number two, don’t dwell on suffering. These days it’s common to dwell on suffering.

It’s common to see the glass as half empty, or even more so, but there’s an old neurological reality barred into our brains what we focus on determines our experienced reality. We say that again, what we focus on determines our experienced reality. Now, this isn’t psychology.

It’s a spiritual insight. Paul knew it forgetting all those things behind. I press onward toward the things that are ahead.

Instead of dwelling on disappointment, Philippians 4:8 says, to think on that which is true and knowable right and pure, lovely admirable, excellent and praiseworthy in other words, on Christ, it’s not just a matter of beginning with the end in mind, it’s stained focused on that, despite appearances to the contrary, how, what’s the secret? It’s mundane really. Saint Benedict said always we begin again with nothing that is harsh nothing that is burdensome. We hear the word, we take the sacrament, we join in fellowship, even on a time changed day.

We seek encouragement and prayer and slowly, certainly, Christ in us builds us into those living stones, causing faith and hope and love to grow in us to grow substantially enough that although the disappointment never goes away, it becomes unimportant. Lastly, I would encourage you to recognize Christ’s work, not so much his work on the cross, but what he’s doing in the present, theologian Peter Leithart puts it this way. Jesus announces the kingdom, which, in essence, means announcing God’s future and the future of God.

Jesus comes announcing that that future is arriving. God intends to rule over all things and he is beginning to rule over all things now. He intends to set Jesus on the throne over the whole cosmos, and he’s beginning to do that now.

He’s going to defeat evil and put his world back together and he’s beginning to do that now the future is arriving and the future is secure in God’s hands. He is the God of the future and he is establishing the future in the present, and the kingdom which is God’s future world arriving in the present is not driven by anxiety, but by trust, because within this kingdom we know that the future is secure. We know that God has everything under control.

We know that God is our heavenly Father who will care for us. And so we too can trust God not only with our deaths, but with our lives. Despite appearances to the contrary, we will feast in the house of Zion.

We will sing with our hearts restored. He has done great things. We will say together we will feast and weep no more.

Happy All Saints Day.